Rogan Whitenails

Thursday, August 15, 2002

My new book is available through amazon.co.uk. It's called 'Failure Crawled up my Leg (2002)'; ISBN: 0953456617; published by Indoor Fighting Press. I played my first gig on the 'Failure Tour' a few nights ago - at the Old Queen's Head in Islington. I read some poems and sang a few songs from my new musical: 'Thick Lady Bangs Her Head, Gets A Bit Thicker (The Unnecessary Musical)'. On this occasion, influenced by the memory of last year's disastrous mouse-mat performances (when I struggled to render live some of the diligently stretched electronic tracks currently on my Electromancer page), I opted to perform acoustic numbers only. And the 'Thick Lady Bangs Her Head, Gets A bit Thicker (The Unnecessary Musical)' musical contains songs suited to this new, relaxed, entirely acoustical approach. I performed the songs on a sinewy bouncy castle; and each time I fell over, a member of the audience was invited to pin a pair of cymbals to my body - culminating in the tying of an undignified rope around my chest, which moored me to a gong above my head. As I hung there, I felt like Richard Harris in 'A Man Called Horse' - only, bouncier ... and whilst I read the final poem - 'The Philosophy of Gesture' - I must have fallen 44 times. When I did 'The Church of Ned Raggett (25 Different People)' as my encore, I doubt the audience heard one word through the cymbal-hysteria. Maybe this is why I sold precisely no copies of my book? That must be it ... Anyway, you now have a chance to buy a copy; a very small run, so run ...